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Ideally the use of a robot is supposed to bring down prices on what the factory makes, which redistributes the new wealth to everyone in society.

In real life, we've been shifting ever-more-steadily towards a rentier economy as actual production grows more and more efficient.

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Something about your comment really struck me. In most sci-fi utopias, increasing automation was assumed to lead to cheaper marginal prices that gave everyone more leisure time. In reality the benefits from increasing automation (and globalization) have instead been naturally captured by those with the means (capital) to achieve them. Sounds a lot like we're either back on the road that Marx described where the few have all the capital or we're able to escape that fate by lowering the capital needed to gain those efficiencies (cloud computing, 3d printing)...

highly recommended story on the topic: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

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